death – Great books blog

Page turner: 6/10
Heart tugger: 8/10
Thought provoker: 7/10
Overall: 3 stars

Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson is the warmest-and-fuzziest book I have read thus far in my great book quest. I would not go so far as to say it is Happy, but it is much more heart warming than the previous 8 I have read. The biggest difference is that the narrator of the book is a content, and his contentment sets the tone for the story.

The narrator is a 76-year-old man named John Ames, writing to his 6 year-old son about all the things Ames would like to be able to tell him as an adult, but can’t because of the very great age gap between them. Whilst there is something bittersweet in such an undertaking, Ames is so happy to have a son and a family at all that I was much more impressed with the warmth and love of the endeavor than the morbidity of it.

For all its warmth (perhaps because of it), Gilead is really the ramblings of an old man. It’s a journal. There are no chapters. The style and tone adds charm, but also makes it occasionally tedious. Especially given that the man is a Congregationalist Reverend (whose father and grandfather were also Reverends), prone to philosophical debates and conjectures. Refreshingly he isn’t one to proselytize, but it can get a bit heavy. Several times I had to stop myself from skim reading. Prepare yourself for the inevitable conflict about predestination. He doesn’t like it, either.

So the book is about religion, and love, and parenthood. It is about loss and friendship and family. It tells a story (or set of stories) about a small-town in the Midwest and its history. Gilead, by the way, is the name of the fictional Iowa town. Set between 1880 and 1957, it touches on the events of both World Wars, and recounts a great deal about its Civil War legacy and abolitionist heritage. It’s a nice book, and if nothing else a very interesting chronicle of a life that lived to see huge technical and social change. Plus, you cannot help but to like Reverend Ames, who is clearly a very, very nice man.

What makes it award-winning, I suspect, is that it tackles a really interesting concept: what a parent wants to teach a child. Knowing you are not going to be present for most of your child’s life – what do you say? Are you selfish? Philosophical? Instructional? Supportive? Robinson, I think, does a lovely job of exploring all of the above.

It’s just that Gilead just didn’t wow me. I got through the book pretty quickly, but mostly because I had 6 hours of train-time over the last several days. I liked reading it, but it didn’t really compel me to keep going. I didn’t Need to know. Throughout, the book inspired me, and touched me, but didn’t – quite – move me.

Page turner: 6/10
Heart tugger: 7/10
Thought provoker: 7/10
**Well crafted: 10/10**
Overall: 4 stars

**Making a special appearance for this book, is the ‘well crafted’ rating. When I originally decided on the different parts of the rating system I took the assumption that all of these books would be at least moderately well written and conceived. And a fifth means of rating a book seemed like a lot. But this book is so very much in a league of its own, I have temporarily introduced the metric so that everyone knows how much it excels. (The temporary rating is very clever colleague’s idea. Thank you.)**

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2009. It really is the ‘American’ type of book that the Pulitzer Prize is looking for. Set in a small town on the coast of Maine in the years post 9/11, it resonates with all that is small-town Americana. But I think (hope) it would make it all the more appealing for an international audience as well.

Olive Kitteridge is the title and the central character of this story of the quietly intertwining lives of a town’s inhabitants. She is irritable, brooding, loving, passionate, and silent. She is the lynch pin of the book, tying together the narration as each chapter shifts to focus on the stories of other people’s lives. The execution is flawless. The story is tight – characters are never forgotten, or left hanging, or not somehow contributing to the progression of the novel. Whereas I often think of all of these pieces of fiction as books or stories, Strout has written a stunning novel.

A quick example: one of the characters describes her father having ‘sole custody’ of her. And for years she thought it was spelled with a u.

To the point. Pointed. But not labored or cocky.

There is little else I can say about this fantastic book. Read it. It is a book about the vastness of love, and anger, and death. Olive certainly feels these intensely. The book has a quietness about it – but the characters’ lives are not at all plodding or quaint. So it is a suppose about ‘quiet lives’ but makes the point that no life is quiet.

I do warn you of one thing: I read this a few years ago and remember not liking it all that much. I wasn’t hugely enthused about re-reading it. My turn-around, I hope, speaks in favor of the book. That said, for me it has very much been a book that displays is greatness through its prose and its craft. Don’t read it just to ‘see what happens next’. Read every word and let it sink in.